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Thursday, November 13, 2014

The Corvette is too Raucous for Korea!

2014 Corvette Stingray. Photo courtesy of Chevrolet.

The automotive industry has very much become global, which means that all sorts of interesting interactions are taking place these days. I've had to learn all sorts of things about different parts of the world that were never covered in school just to keep abreast of what's going on in the industry and why they're happening. Just this week I learned that the Corvette Stingray is far too raucous for the likes of South Korea.

Apparently the car has been blocked from being sold in the Asian country, thanks to some interesting government regulations. That powerful V-8 engine and performance-tuned exhaust is apprarently too much for the ears of the country's inhabitants, or at least the government body that regulates vehicle noise.

In the United States there are regulations that cap how loud a vehicle can be. They vary from city to city, but pretty much you would have to chop off the resonators from your vehicle to surpass them. Anyone who has stood next to a Harley with Screaming Eagle pipes when the engine first fires up knows that we tolerate quite a bit of vehicle noise. This is why blocking the Corvette for being too noisy sounds, well... ridiculous.

The Corvette blockage really isn't that big of a deal. Only about a dozen of the sports cars are even sold in South Korea each year. I guess it means that more C7s will be available to consumers in the United States, where we like our cars loud, beer cold, and television mindless.